[mmuras]

Originally Posted by PapiPabs

^Cosigned. I installed .210 Thursday afternoon and the battery was at about 80%. I'm just now getting to the point where the battery is getting low, and I've probably been using the device more than normal since that time if anything. Definitely worth the upgrade from a battery life standpoint.

Which Device OS did you upgrade from?

Was it older or newer than ".185"?

Thanks,

--mmuras

[mmuras]

Originally Posted by mmuras

Hello folks:

I just joined AT&T today (Dec 13, 2008) and I just updated my new BlackBerry Bold to version 4.6.0.185.

I had not reloaded very much data at the time of the OS upgrade, but it only took about 20 min for the whole thing from Backup on older Device OS to Restore on new Device OS.

I will let you know how my battery is working once I have it for a few more days.

I probably would not have updated so soon, but in the 6 hours I had the phone it drained from 50% battery to 5% battery.

-Cheers-
-mmuras

Update: 2008-12-14, 6:00 AM

-Before I fell asleep last night I made sure my BlackBerry Bold had 100% battery life. I checked my Bold this morning, the phone had a minimal 5% battery drain and is still sitting at 95%. (Current OS is 4.6.0.185)

When I first got the phone (yesterday, 2008-12-13), my sales rep at AT&T store said he did not know of any issue regarding OS problems. I am going to keep monitoring...but I think if I make it to 3 days with out charging...I will let him know that AT&T should consider at updating the OS on all new BlackBerry Bolds.

-A sleepy mmuras

[obentou]

Won't changing the brightness settings to 10 and Auto-dim on save battery even further? Why the 40 and auto-dim off? I'm puzzled :D

[PapiPabs]

Originally Posted by mmuras

Which Device OS did you upgrade from?

Was it older or newer than ".185"?

Thanks,

--mmuras

My bad. I should have stated that. I was on .167 because I returned my original Bold. I had .190 on the original, and though it was better than .167 in terms of battery life, it seems like .210 is better still. That, and my thumbnails are back on the pics I have stored in device memory! LOL

As far as letting AT&T know about the better battery life on the newer OS's, I'm sure they already know. I imagine RIM presents the newer version of the software to the carriers that sell the device, and they beta test to decide which ones they will officially release. Being that there have been people talking about bugs with .185 and .190 on this forum, I'm imagining that there are AT&T beta testers experiencing the same. From the sounds of it, AT&T is picky about releasing new software (look how long it took them to release 4.5 for the Curve), so that's probably why they're still on .167.

Originally Posted by obentu

Won't changing the brightness settings to 10 and Auto-dim on save battery even further? Why the 40 and auto-dim off? I'm puzzled :D

I have my screen brightness set at 40, and auto-dim turned off. That helped battery life out considerably, but turning off WiFi when not in use made it really noticeable. And that was when I was still on .167. I did have WiFi turned on for the entire two day period I spoke of above though. I'm now turning it off when not in use to see how much longer it will go.

[Headhunter1975]

I'd really be interested in one of these, if it was ever made for the Bold.

http ://green.yahoo.com/blog/ecogeek/689/iphone-gets-solar-powered-case.html

[bradhs]

Now that's cool ... I wonder how much weight it adds.

Originally Posted by Headhunter1975

I'd really be interested in one of these, if it was ever made for the Bold.

http ://green.yahoo.com/blog/ecogeek/689/iphone-gets-solar-powered-case.html

[coolkarim]

isnt the best way to save battery life just to turn off 3G?? and set it at 2G/GSM. turn 3g back on when you want to do some data intensive stuff

[Headhunter1975]

Well AT&T customers can't turn off their 3G, but the Solar case seems like a nice option if it would materialize. I've been tryingt to figure out who the manufacture of it is, the best I can find is that it's a company in Japan. Sorry that the link I posted didn't work, you have to delete the space between the "http" and the ":", I didn't have enough posts to actually paste a link. :(

[Kane317]

Question: If you can always top-off your Bold's Battery throughout the day (unless this has changed since the Curve and 8800), what is wrong with charging every night? I just have happen to have like 3-4 mini USB Blackberry chargers and I have them lying around everywhere (living room, work, next to my bed).

The only counter argument I can think of is not having enough chargers, or simply not having a convenient location to charge your phone near your bed/bedstand.